Wasko Lit: Help your student Develop a love for classic literature.

Books aren't written to be fodder for "rigorous" high school literature teachers. They are written to inspire, awaken and delight readers. In these classes, geared toward homeschoolers, we respect the intentions of the authors. We don't read selected excerpts--we read whole books. And we don't do endless, pleasure-sucking analysis.

We read and we discuss what we've read. We seek first to understand, as much as possible, what is going on. Then we talk about what makes great books great with an eye to developing appreciation and enjoyment in reading them. We talk about what we like and don't like about a book. It's not important that students love every book, but it's important to know why they do or don't.

We don't read books in order to learn literary concepts. That's backwards. We learn literary concepts in order to help us more fully enjoy the books.

In a nutshell, it's about the books.

As the teacher, I'll help students along this exciting journey. I will be a resource to some. I'll be a tour guide for others. I'll hold some hands and show some the way. But I won't get in the way of the books. Whatever I have to offer pales in comparison to what Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Faulkner have to offer. I mostly let them do the talking. My role is more like color commentator.

If this is the kind of experience you want for your teens, enroll them today!

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

— C.S. Lewis

How Do Wasko Lit Classes Work?

Classes meet once per week during a course (with breaks for holidays). Students will login to access the course.

Students can view and download a reading schedule at the start of the course, with reading assignments for the entire year, broken down into manageable, daily chunks. Students will be required to complete a short, online comprehension quiz each week prior to class. In addition, they will be asked to answer a discussion question related to each week's reading. The quiz and discussion question will be available on the website.

During our weekly class, students view the teacher and onscreen presentation material via webcam. Students may participate in the class session--asking and answering questions via live chat and/or audio.

All class sessions are recorded and made available for students who cannot attend the live class sessions.

Students will submit three project as well: two literary analysis papers and a creative project.

Students Must:

Attend a one-hour, weekly, live course session

Complete each week’s assigned reading

Take a short, online comprehension quiz

Answer a weekly, online discussion question

Submit two literary analysis papers and one creative project

Yes, your kids can handle these books.

I know the reading listcan seem intimidating. Parents and students sometimes wonder if they are ready for difficult classic works like The Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Crime and Punishment and Moby Dick. But trust me; I've been teaching this stuff for almost twenty years to students of a wide range of abilities. They are always capable of much more than you or they would expect.

Some books will seem beyond students when they first attempt to read them, but I provide lots of resources to help along the way. And, of course, we spend much of the time in our class discussions on the basics--sometimes just figuring out exactly what is going on.

We will challenge students of every ability. Some will be ready to go beyond simple comprehension into literary analysis and criticism. Others will simply work to get a feel for the basic purpose and plot of each work. Either way, students will come away with life-changing encounters with some of the best writing our culture has ever produced.

What Are the Great Books?

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

— Mortimer Adler

There's no officially recognized Great Books list, of course, and even if there were, these courses would only cover a sampling. Scholars have offered various versions of the "canon" of Western literature for generations. The books we cover are included by most.

All courses focus on works of fiction, though we do sprinkle in some classic non-fiction as well. Students will encounter epic poems, novels, drama, short stories, poetry, biography, memoir, and works of philosophy and theology. They will be provoked to think and feel more deeply about the world and their place in it.

Success Stories

I couldn’t endorse a literature class by Mr. Wasko highly enough to do it justice. What I will tell you to do is to take it and take it now. I discovered that I understood not just “the Classics” but the world better by taking Mr. Wasko’s literature classes. They give you a reference point to understand events in the world. Why do free markets exist in all democracies? Read “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith to find out. Why did the Greek city state influence western thought right through to the Founding Fathers? Read Plato, Aristotle as well as Kant and Thomas Paine. While I may be giving away part of the classes for free here, these are some of the life lessons that I learned from Mr. Wasko. 